Donika Kelly was born in Los Angeles, California, and moved with her family to Arkansas in the late 1990s. She earned her MFA in writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin, and her PhD in English from Vanderbilt University.
Kelly’s published books include Bestiary (Graywolf, 2016) and The Renunciations (Graywolf, 2021), as well as the chapbook Aviarium (2017). Bestiary won the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The Renunciations was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and winner of the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Her poems have been published in outlets including The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.
Kelly’s further honors include fellowships from Cave Canem, the NEA, and the Fine Arts Work Center. She currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa, with her wife, the writer Melissa Febos, and teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa.
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Photo by Ladan Osman.